Brazilian voters went to the polls on Sunday, October 5, 2014 to choose a
President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, as well as members of the
country's bicameral legislature, the National Congress. However, no candidate
attained an absolute majority in the presidential election, and therefore
a runoff vote was held on Sunday, October 26, 2014.

An overview of the Brazilian electoral system is presented here. In addition,
national- and state-level results are available here for the following federal
elections:

The 1988 constitution stipulates that the Federative Republic of Brazil is
a legal democratic state, in which all power emanates from the people, who
exercise it by means of elected representatives or directly. Both the federal
government and the governments of Brazil's 26 states consist of executive,
legislative and judicial branches; likewise, the Federal District, where
the capital city of Brasilia is located, has its own government and legislature.

Executive power is exercised by the President of the Republic, directly elected
by universal suffrage for a term of four years. The president, who may be
re-elected for only one subsequent term, is chosen by an absolute majority
of votes, not counting blank or void votes. If no candidate attains an absolute
majority in the first round of voting, a second round is held between the
two candidates with the largest number of votes, and the candidate that obtains
a majority of valid votes is deemed elected.

Legislative power is exercised by the National Congress, which consists of
the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate.

The Chamber of Deputies is composed of 513 members directly elected for a
four-year term of office by proportional representation in each state and
the Federal District. Chamber seats are distributed among the federal units
in proportion to population, but no unit may have fewer than eight or more
than seventy seats. Each federal unit is an electoral constituency, in which
political parties and coalitions of two or more parties submit lists of
candidates; voters may choose one candidate and one party.

Chamber of Deputies seats are distributed in each constituency according
to an electoral quotient, obtained by dividing the total number of valid
votes by the number of constituency seats. Then, the number of votes each
party or coalition has obtained is divided by the electoral quotient. The
result of this division, disregarding fractions, is the party quotient, and
each party or coalition elects as many deputies as its party quotient indicates;
if there remain unallocated seats after the application of party quotients,
these are distributed according to the largest average method. Within each
party, mandates are assigned to list candidates with the largest number of
votes until all seats are filled.

The Federal Senate's 81 members are directly elected for an eight-year term
of office. Senate elections are held every four years, alternating between
one-third (27) and two-thirds (54) of the seats. Each state and the Federal
District chooses three senators by the plurality or first-past-the-post method,
under which the candidates obtaining the largest number of votes are elected
to office.

Electoral enrollment and voting are mandatory for persons over the age of
eighteen; nonetheless, both are optional for the illiterate and those older
than seventy, as well as for those older than sixteen and under eighteen.

Brazil has developed a highly fragmented political party system since the
transition to democracy in 1985, following more than two decades of military
rule. Since 1990, there have been no fewer than eighteen parties represented
in the Chamber of Deputies, and none of these has attained even a quarter
of the seats on that legislative body. Nevertheless, four major parties stand
out: the Workers' Party (PT), the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB),
the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) and the Democrats (DEM),
previously the Liberal Front Party (PFL). Regarding ideological stance, the
PT is considered a left-wing party and the PSDB a center to center-left party,
while the PMDB is centrist and the PFL is positioned to the right-of-center.

Brazil's transition process to democracy began during the last years of military
rule. In 1979, the artificial two-party system imposed by the military in
1965 was dissolved, and new political parties were allowed to form. The
conservative Democratic Social Party (PDS) emerged as a successor of the
governmental National Renewal Alliance (ARENA), while the opposition Brazilian
Democratic Movement reconstituted itself as the PMDB. Two groups sought to
re-establish the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB) of the late president Getúlio
Vargas, who ruled Brazil as a dictator from 1930 to 1945, and as a democratically
elected president from 1951 until 1954, when he committed suicide. The
authorities ruled that the group headed by Ivete Vargas (a relative of
Getúlio) had the right to use the old party's name and initials; the
group led by Leonel Brizola then founded the left-wing Democratic Labour
Party (PDT). These four parties, along with the Workers' Party (PT), headed
by union leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, took part in the 1982 election
- Brazil's first free election in two decades. In the legislative vote, the
PDS won the largest number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies but failed
to attain an absolute majority, while in the gubernatorial elections the
opposition captured the country's three major states: São Paulo and
Minas Gerais elected PMDB governors, and Rio de Janeiro chose the PDT's Leonel
Brizola.

The military government had planned a controlled transition to democracy
through the indirect election of a civilian president in a PDS-dominated
electoral college, and the ruling party went on to choose Paulo Maluf as
its presidential candidate. Maluf, a former governor of São Paulo,
was (and remains) an extremely controversial figure in Brazil, linked to
numerous corruption scandals over the course of his political career. In
fact, such is his reputation that Brazilian Portuguese has acquired a verb
derived from his last name: malufar, which means to steal from the
public coffers.

The opposition parties, along with a group of PDS dissidents called the Liberal
Front (FL), agitated in favor of holding direct presidential elections: they
failed to attain this objective, but the breakaway Liberal Front deprived
the PDS of its electoral college majority, and PMDB candidate Tancredo Neves
was elected President, supported by the opposition parties and the FL. However,
Neves - who had been governor of Minas Gerais since 1982, and prime minister
of Brazil from 1961 to 1962, during a short-lived period of parliamentary
government - fell gravely ill shortly before taking office and died after
repeated surgery; José Sarney, vice-president elect and a PDS dissident,
took over the presidency.

The implementation of a seemingly successful price control package - the
Cruzado Plan - allowed the coalition government of the PMDB and the
Liberal Front Party (PFL) to score a sweeping victory in the 1986 legislative
and gubernatorial elections: the PMDB won an absolute majority in the Chamber
of Deputies, as well as all but one of the gubernatorial races; the PFL took
the remaining one, and came in second place in the Chamber. The PDS faltered,
while the left-wing parties (PDT and PT) registered modest gains. Following
the legalization of all political parties, the number of parties represented
in the Chamber of Deputies increased to twelve. The newly elected National
Congress became a Constituent Assembly the following year, and set out to
draft a new constitution to replace the authoritarian instruments of government
inherited from the military regime. Meanwhile, the Cruzado Plan collapsed
shortly after the 1986 election, and once again inflation spiraled out of
control; eventually, the PMDB-PFL coalition broke apart.

In 1988, Brazil promulgated the new constitution, its eighth in history.
This lengthy document, which originally had a total of 245 articles, retained
the presidential form of government but limited the powers of the presidency,
which could no longer rule by decree. That same year, the Party of Brazilian
Social Democracy (PSDB) split off the PMDB.

A total of twenty-one candidates ran in the 1989 presidential election, the
first held by popular vote since 1960. In the first round, Fernando Collor
de Mello, candidate of the small, center-right National Reconstruction Party
(PRN), came out of nowhere to finish in first place (but without an absolute
majority), followed by the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT); Leonel
Brizola (PDT) finished third, narrowly behind Lula. Mário Covas of
the PSDB achieved a respectable fourth place, ahead of Paulo Maluf (PDS),
while the PMDB and PFL presidential candidates fared disastrously. In the
runoff vote, Collor prevailed over Lula, becoming Brazil's youngest president.

However, Collor's presidency turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. During
the nearly three years he held office, Collor was unable to effectively confront
the profound economic crisis he inherited from his predecessor, nor was he
able to muster congressional support for his proposals to cure the country's
ills. Eventually, Collor appeared to be involved in a multi-million dollar
corruption and influence-peddling scandal, which led Congress to initiate
an impeachment trial against him. In late 1992, Collor resigned from office,
shortly after the Senate had begun the impeachment trial. Collor's
vice-president, Itamar Franco, held the presidency for the remainder of his
unfinished mandate.

In 1993, President Franco named well-known sociologist (and then-Minister
of Foreign Affairs) Fernando Henrique Cardoso as Minister of Finance. Cardoso
introduced the Real Plan, which stabilized the country's finances and brought
hyperinflation to an end. In the 1994 presidential election, Cardoso ran
as the candidate of his party, the PSDB. The success of the Real Plan allowed
Cardoso (who was also supported by the PFL and the PTB) to prevail by a wide
margin over the PT's Lula da Silva and six other candidates, attaining an
absolute majority in the first round of voting. In the 1998 presidential
election, Cardoso - who had successfully persuaded Congress to amend the
constitution and allow presidential re-election for a single term - was
re-elected on the first round by an absolute majority, with Lula in second
place once again.

In the 2002 presidential election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ran for
the fourth straight time as the PT candidate, but his campaign now emphasized
"change without rupture." This pragmatic approach proved to be successful:
in the first round of voting, Lula outpolled his closest adversary, the PSDB's
José Serra, by a two-to-one margin, but fell short of an absolute
majority; in the runoff election, Lula da Silva won the presidency by the
largest vote margin ever recorded in the history of Brazil. At the same time,
the PT secured the largest number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

President Lula da Silva's government successfully continued the economic
policies initiated by Cardoso, while establishing a number of social programs
to combat poverty, most notably among them the Bolsa Família
or Family Stipend, which benefits twelve million Brazilian families -
approximately a third of the country's population. However, a number of
corruption scandals seriously tarnished the Workers' Party reputation. The
most damaging of these was the 2005 mensalão or monthly allowance
scandal, which implicated a number of high-ranking party officials. Nonetheless,
Lula was not directly linked to the aforementioned scandals, and he prevailed
decisively over the PSDB's Geraldo Alckmin in the 2006 presidential election,
albeit PT lost ground in the legislative contests and finished second - behind
PMDB - in the Chamber of Deputies.